Politicians
who support gun control and gun control advocates are either ignorant,
power hungry control freaks, or delusional idealists. Ignorance would
mean simply lacking in knowledge of the subject but because of their
positions and touted “research” they should know the subject.
Power hunger control freaks would indicate a desire to subjugate a population
under their perspective of reality regardless of facts. And finally
delusional idealists believe that all mankind can live in such a way
as to make weapons unnecessary and that we can force this position by
simply taking away the weapons.

Each
and every position is lacking in common sense and logic. First: history
of mankind has shown that violence by man against man has always taken
place. Some have argued that it is human nature but in a civilized society
we try to provide mechanisms to allow alternatives to violence. For
many of us that is sufficient, for others – not so much. Secondly:
for whatever reason; some people seemed to be pre-disposed to violence.
Jack the ripper, who still evokes terror and disgust from society, did
his deeds with a knife. Whether you call it a mental derangement or
just plain evil there are bad people in the world, there always has
been and there always will be. Lastly; to believe a utopian ideal can
be accomplished by forcing people to do so is delusional on its face.
The vast majority of people when facing starvation or watching their
loved ones starve will do things they normally would not do to save
them – steal, fight, and perhaps even kill to save the lives of
themselves and their loved ones.

To
be right up front – gun control is not about guns, it never has
been, it is about control. There is no other conclusion that can be
drawn. Let’s take the most recent Colorado move theater nut-job
for instance; at his home police found a number of explosives and equipment.
He had the knowledge to build “sophisticated” explosive
devices. Do we think for one moment that if by some miracle every firearm
in the US was confiscated and no firearms were smuggled into the country
and no garage shop machinist built a weapon for him that he would not
have used those explosive devices to carry out his fiendish plot?

The
common denominator in all this is the individual. Does a person become
more dead if he is killed by a firearm rather than a pipe bomb or a
sword or an icepick? The object that kills is merely a tool chosen by
the individual. The act of killing, by whatever tool, is still a crime,
and has always been a crime.

We
also always hear from the left that we need to make it harder for the
criminals to get guns. Really? So why do they pass laws against the
law abiding citizen making it harder for them to defend themselves from
the criminal? The criminal is doing nothing new. His behavior has not
changed only the tools he has used. We have outlawed many inanimate
objects over the centuries and not once has it made those objects go
away. A perfect example is drug laws. We have passed thousands of pages
of laws to outlaw drugs and decades later we have more drugs on the
street than ever before. We outlawed alcohol nation-wide only to repeal
it a few years later after it failed so miserably.

What
is the common denominator here? To use a TV phrase it is the “human
factor.” Does it matter what drug a person is on when he runs
someone over in his car? Does it change the effect on the person struck?
Does it matter what tool was used to threaten someone in a robbery?
Do you only give up $40.00 to a man with a knife and $100.0 to the man
with a gun? What we need to focus on is behavior – not tools.

An
example of the lefts logic is given by ex-President Jimmy Carter who
stated

“I
have used weapons since I was big enough to carry one, and now own
two handguns, four shotguns and three rifles, two with scopes. I use
them carefully, for hunting game from our family woods and fields,
and occasionally for hunting with my family and friends in other places.
We cherish the right to own a gun and some of my hunting companions
like to collect rare weapons. One of them is a superb craftsman who
makes muzzle-loading rifles, one of which I displayed for four years
in my private White House office.

But none
of us wants to own an assault weapon, because we have no desire to
kill policemen or go to a school or workplace to see how many victims
we can accumulate before we are finally shot or take our own lives.
That’s why the White House and Congress must not give up on
trying to reinstate a ban on assault weapons, even if it may be politically
difficult.”[1]

First
of all try to overlook the rhetoric of wanting “to kill policemen”
etc. This is an emotional plea to sway people to his position and has
nothing to do with the facts. No law abiding citizen wants to do these
things and having a law against assault weapons will not deter a criminal
from getting them. Secondly, President Carter is disingenuous at best
when he talks about the “assault weapons” ban. He stated
he owns three rifles, two with scopes and the only difference between
his firearms and the assault weapon is in the furniture attached to
it. (Furniture is the items attached to the firearm, stock, hand guards,
flash suppressor, etc.)

An
assault weapon, according to the assault weapon ban, is any firearm
that had a certain number of furniture items on the firearm. For instance
if I remove the “flash suppressor” and replace it with a
muzzle break, change the pistol grip to a one piece stock that had a
thumb-hole in it, and reduced the magazine from 20 rounds to 10 –
have I changed the ballistic capability of the weapon? A 7.62 (30 cal)
round will impact with the same devastation regardless of what the weapon
LOOKS LIKE. An M-16 rifle shoots the 5.56/.223 round and is used around
the world by many militaries. Do you think the round will be less effective
if shot from a rifle that is set-up in a non-militaristic looking weapon?

Let’s
look at this from a different point of view: in the Supreme Court case
of United States V. Miller, the Supreme Court found in favor of the
United States concerning the interstate transportation of a sawed off
shotgun. The defense argued that the weapon was protected under the
Second Amendment and Justice McReynolds gave the opinion of the court
stating:

“In
the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use
of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in
length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the
preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia, we cannot
say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear
such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that
this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that
its use could contribute to the common defense.”[2]

Their
finding of the court in supporting the US government’s position
was that the weapon would NOT be covered under the second amendment
as it was NOT a part of the “ordinary military equipment.”
However, assault weapons ARE a part of the normal military equipment
and therefore ARE covered under the Second Amendment. We cannot have
it both ways.

Senator
Diane Feinstein likewise shows here ignorance stating:

"Weapons
of war don't belong on the streets," Feinstein said on Fox News.
This is a powerful weapon, it had a 100-round drum; this is a man
who planned, who went in, and his purpose was to kill as many people
as he could in a sold-out theater. We've got to really sit down and
come to grips with what is sold to the average citizen in America.”

“I
have no problem with people being licensed to buy a firearm, but these
are weapons that are only going to be used to kill a lot of people
in close combat," she said.[3]

We
have already covered the legal, Second Amendment, aspect to gun control
but what about the moral rights of the citizen to have firearms? She
states that these are used to kill people “in close combat.”
It is interesting that she uses that terminology. I’m sure she
used it to evoke a negative militaristic emotion from the reader as
something inherently evil. The act at the theater was most definitely
evil but the weapon was just a tool.

But
getting back to Ms. Feinstein and the moral right of the people –
why did the founders put the second amendment into the Bill of Rights?
Was it to allow Americans to hunt and go target shooting? No. Was it
to come to the aid of the country and keep the peace? Yes in part. Was
it to be a check and balance to civil authority against a tyrannical
government? Absolutely. United States Representative Ron Paul, from
the 14th District in Texas, stated in a November 6th, 2006 article entitled
“Gun Control on the Back Burner”:

“The
Second amendment is not about hunting deer or keeping a pistol in
your nightstand. It is not about protecting oneself against common
criminals. It is about preventing tyranny. The Founders knew that
unarmed citizens would never be able to overthrow a tyrannical government
as they did. They envisioned government as a servant, not a master,
of the American people. The muskets they used against the British
Army were the assault rifles of that time. It is practical,
rather than alarmist, to understand that unarmed citizens cannot be
secure in their freedoms.”[4]

Those
on the left talk of wanting to protect the citizens by enacting tougher
gun laws but by enacting these laws they disarm law abiding citizens
thereby aiding the criminal. They totally overlook the entire history
of mankind and the fact that governments have killed more of their own
citizens than the criminals ever have and the very first thing a government
does is to remove the ability of the citizen to resist is first registering
and then confiscating weapons; whether that is a sword or a rifle.

The
gun control advocates would have us believe the following:

First:
Gun control laws curb criminal behavior.
Second: If gun availability is lessened there would be a decrease in
gun crimes.
Third: More gun control means safer streets, schools, homes, etc.

All
three statements would be true, in a vacuum or in a totally controlled
environment. If we add the human element into the equation, these statements
become false. First, as we have already discussed, the criminal does
not obey the law and therefore does not care about legally purchasing
or owning firearms. Do we really believe that someone who is capable
of rape or murder cares one whit about registering a firearm or submitting
for a license? Of course not! He does not obey the law; therefore no
law will curb his behavior. Second, in every state where handguns are
freely permitted to be carried there has been a lessening of overall
violent crimes. In every country where massive gun confiscation and
control has been enacted, they have seen an increase in gun related
crime. It does seem to follow, “if you outlaw guns, the only people
who will have guns will be the outlaws.” Third, the city with
the most stringent gun control laws is the city with the highest gun
crime, Washington D.C.

So
why doesn’t gun control work? It is really quite simple, laws
are meant to control and regulate “behavior” not objects,
a set of standards, if you will, that says these things we do not do,
and if you do them there will be consequences. Legal systems are designed
to provide a framework of acceptable “behavior” by which
persons within a society interact with each other. Murder is illegal
in nearly every society on the face of the earth. How that murder is
accomplished is simply tool identification. The lack of moral upbringing
and interference by the government has removed parental power. Today
a child in some cities cannot be spanked out of fear that child protective
services will take their child away. Yet, the state makes the parents
responsible for the child’s behavior, and stands between the child
and parent when discipline is most needed. If a child grows up thinking
there are no harsh consequences to whatever he does, then he will do
whatever he wants. The problem with our society is not the availability
of guns it is the absence of a moral standard for our society.

What
our nation needs are laws that punish criminal behavior and to stop
criminalizing honest citizens who wish only to protect themselves and
their families. Both the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) statistics have shown that the majority
of violent crimes are committed without firearms, and the vast majority
of gun crimes are committed with guns that were illegally obtained,
bypassing gun laws. So the net effect of gun control laws is to affect
the law abiding citizen and has virtually no effect on the criminal
element of our society.

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So
instead of listening to lying politicians, agenda driven special interest
groups, start taking responsibility for your own life. Stop demanding
from someone else what you are too much of a coward to do yourself.
The Supreme Court has stated the police are not liable to protect any
individual citizen. Then if they are not – who is? YOU!

If
more law abiding citizens would purchase, train, and start taking responsibility
for themselves and their position in society, those who would do them
ill would think twice about it. And all you PC business owners, like
Colorado movie theaters, who make it unlawful for a law abiding citizen
to defend himself have created an environment that emboldens the lawless
because no one is going to be able to do a damn thing to stop them.
These businesses have a degree of responsibility for creating a venue
of criminal terror.

Michael
LeMieux was born in Midwest City, Oklahoma in 1956 and graduated from
Weber State University in Utah with a degree in Computer Science. He
served in both the US Navy and US Army (Active duty and National Guard)
and trained in multiple intelligence disciplines and was a qualified
paratrooper. He served with the 19th Special Forces Group, while in
the National Guard, as a Special Forces tactical intelligence team member.
He served tours to Kuwait and Afghanistan where he received the Purple
Heart for injuries received in combat.

Mr. LeMieux left military duty at the end of 2005 after being medically
discharged with over 19 years of combined military experience. He currently
works as an intelligence contractor to the US government.

Michael
is a strict constitutionalist who believes in interpreting the constitution
by the original intent of the founding fathers. His research has led
him to the conclusion that the republic founded by the Constitution
is no longer honored by our government. That those who rule America
today are doing so with the interest of the federal government in mind
and not the Citizens. Michael believes that all three branches of government
have strayed far from the checks and balances built into the Constitution
and they have failed the American people. A clear example is the Second
Amendment, which the Supreme Court and the founders have all said was
an individual right and could not be "infringed" upon, now
has more than 20,000 state and federal laws regulating every aspect
of the individuals right, a definite infringement. He has traveled around
the world living in 14 States of the Union including Hawaii, and visited
(for various lengths of time) in Spain, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Korea,
Scotland, Pakistan, Mauritius, Somalia, Diego Garcia, Australia, Philippines,
England, Italy, Germany, and Puerto Rico.

Michael
now lives in Nebraska with his wife, two of his three children, Mother-in-Law
and grandchild. His hobbies include shooting, wood-working, writing,
amateur inventor and scuba diving when he can find the time.

In order for the
smart meter program to be of any benefit to the grid as a whole it would
necessitate nearly universal usage across the country. The concept on
the surface is actually a good idea if energy demand is the actual goal.